Tears Will Fall

This week’s Red Writing Hood prompt was to write about a fight. I chose to revisit Greta and her story, pieces of which can be found here and here and here. I’ll admit this prompt was challenging for me; I am not confrontational and definitely haven’t experienced a physical fight. As always, concrit is invited and appreciated!

Time stopped.

Greta stared at him, shocked by what she saw in his eyes. Once, she had been able to fall into those calm, chocolate pools, comforted by what she found there. Now, they had morphed into something ugly and alien and destructive.

She braced herself for the tears she was certain would pool onto her lashes and down her cheeks. Always, always she could count on her tears. Tears of joy, tears of despair, tears of anger, they were the one constant in her emotional reaction repertoire.

One second passed.

She hadn’t blinked, her eyes locked on his. Her eyes were dry, and the feeling was as foreign to her as the expression imprinted on his. Her face was on fire.

This man was not her husband.

This man could not be her husband.

Two seconds passed.

Without thinking about the consequences, her hand pulled back and snapped towards his face. Their level of surprise was equal as her small, angry palm connected with his cheek, her hand twisting into a claw as she completed the blow, her nails scraping against the flesh she had once caressed in love and kissed out of habit each day before he left for work.

Her pain was outlined in red on the side of his face.

His eyes hadn’t changed.

The sameness of his expression was terrible, and her fear escalated into horror.

Recklessly, she hit him again, this time using her hand like a club, the blow somewhere between a slap and a punch. The delicate bones in her hand struck his cheekbone, and a dull ache radiated down her wrist.

Her anger throbbed in the place their bones collided.

His eyes hadn’t changed.

One more desperate slap, the crack of flesh against flesh ringing through the air.

Her anguish flowed through the nerve endings in her fingertips to the face she had cherished above all others.

His eyes hadn’t changed.

Three seconds passed.

An eternity.

She finally blinked, her hands folded calmly in her lap.

Familiar tears scalded her eyes and her cheeks and her lips, silent tears she let fall without any attempt to hide or wipe away. The expected tears became a shield against the pain radiating from somewhere around her heart.

Her attack had happened only in her head, her mind’s futile attempt to elicit any sort of passion from the man sitting in front of her.

The man who had vowed his life to her, to their future family.

The man who had just calmly laid divorce papers on their carefully chosen café table.

The man who was walking away, in what seemed like only moments since her miscarriage.

The man with the eyes of hardened stone.

Those weren’t her husband’s eyes.

Her marriage was over.